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From Briefing.com: 4:25 pm : Despite weakness in the U.S. dollar, stocks spent nearly the entire session mired in weakness. Losses remained contained, however.

Participants showed indifference to renewed selling against the greenback, which took the Dollar Index back toward the 52-week lows that it set earlier this week. It settled with a 0.4% loss.

Though the dollar spent the entire session in the red, the broader market struggled to shake free from its own spell of weakness. Large-cap tech issues were among the primary laggards; that caused the Nasdaq to trail the other headline indices.

Financials helped lead the broader market on a late charge back toward the neutral line, though. The sector had outperformed for the entire session and was able to finish with a 0.9% gain. Its strength was rooted in banking issues. As such, the KBW Banking Index advanced 1.4%.

Zimmer Holdings (ZMH 58.03, +1.28) helped the health care sector put together a solid 0.4% gain. Shares of the medical equipment and supplies company were upgraded by analysts at UBS.

Several consumer staples stocks ripped higher late in the session amid news from Daily Telegraph that Reckitt Benckiser is close to announcing a cross-border transaction that is suspected to involve a consumer staples play. The consumer staples sector settled flat, though.

Though the dollar's drop did little for stocks, it helped prop up precious metals prices. Gold futures hit another new all-time high of $1153.40 per ounce, but settled fractionally higher at $1141.20 per ounce.

Oil prices oscillated. Bullish inventory data drove oil prices up more than 1% in midmorning trade, but it then rolled over in midafternoon trade. Crude managed to rebound and close up 0.5% at $79.52 per barrel.

The latest dose of economic data indicated that consumer prices for October increased 0.3%, which is a bit stronger than the 0.2% increase that had been widely expected. Core prices increased 0.2%, which is also bit stronger than the 0.1% monthly increase that had been widely forecast.

Housing starts for October came in at an annualized rate of 529,000, which is below the rate of 600,000 that had been widely expected. Meanwhile, building permits came in at an annualized rate of 552,000, which is a slower pace than the annualized rate of 580,000 that economists, on average, had forecast.

Advancing Sectors: Financials (+0.9%), Health Care (+0.4%), Telecom (+0.2%)
Declining Sectors: Tech (-0.5%), Utilities (-0.5%), Industrials (-0.4%), Energy (-0.3%), Consumer Discretionary (-0.3%), Materials (-0.1%)
Unchanged: Consumer StaplesDJ30 -11.11 NASDAQ -10.64 NQ100 -0.6% R2K -0.4% SP400 -0.5% SP500 -0.52 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1045/2.00 bln/1629 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1381/1.06 bln/1640

4:06PM Semtech announces definitive agreement to acquire Sierra Monolithics (SMTC) 16.98 -0.17 : Co announces it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sierra Monolithics for $180 million in cash. The transaction is expected to be accretive to Semtech's GAAP earnings per share within twelve months of the transaction closing and is expected to be immediately accretive to Semtech's Non-GAAP gross margins and Non-GAAP earnings per share. Sierra Monolithics expects to generate approximately $50 million of revenue for calendar year 2009 with gross margins towards the high end of Semtech's stated gross margin model of 55% to 60%.

4:05PM NetApp beats by $0.07, beats on revs; guides Q3 EPS in-line, revs in-line (NTAP) 29.56 -0.16 : Reports Q2 (Oct) earnings of $0.37 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.07 better than the First Call consensus of $0.30; revenues fell 0.2% year/year to $910 mln vs the $881 mln consensus. Co issues in-line guidance for Q3, sees EPS of $0.36-0.37, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.36 consensus; sees Q3 revs of $935-955 mln vs. $920.91 mln consensus.

Fujitsu and NetApp (NTAP) announced their intention to deepen their partnership globally and provide more tightly integrated and automated storage and data management solutions. Cos ihntend to jointly develop integrated products and services specifically in the areas of virtualization, storage and data management, and storage services and solutions...

1:25PM Semiconductors Hldrs Trust continues to display relative weakness, vacillating near early low (SMH) 25.95 -0.37 : Highlighted the relative weakness in the group this morning and it continues to lag with it recently retesting it late morning low. Support is at 25.91/25.87 which is of interest on an intraday and close basis. Other sectors pacing the way lower on a relative basis during the recent slide include: Oil Service OIH, Energy XLE, Steel SLX, Coal KOL, Gold Miners GDX.

7:30AM Am Superconductor receives second wind turbine electrical control systems order from Hyundai Heavy Industries (AMSC) 31.78 : Co announces that it has received a follow-on order for 30 sets of electrical control systems from Hyundai Heavy Industries Co for its 1.65 megawatt wind turbines now in production in South Korea. AMSC also has received an electrical control systems order for HHI's 2 MW wind turbine prototypes. All of the systems will be shipped to HHI by the end of May 2010.

7:04AM Advanced Micro commences tender offer for its 5.75% convertible senior notes due 2012 and announces redemption of 7.75% senior notes due 2012 (AMD) 6.62 :

7:03AM Solarfun Power beats by $0.22, reports revs in-line (SOLF) 5.83 : Reports Q3 (Sep) earnings of $0.37 per share, $0.22 better than the First Call consensus of $0.15, rev fell 23% YoY to 144.6 mln vs the $145.07 mln consensus. Co sees Q4 shipments to be approximately 110 MW, with module processing services accounting for about 20% of the total shipments, with average selling prices to decline by approximately 5% from the previous quarter, in constant currency. For the first quarter of 2010, the co expects to see continuing good demand, with prices declining slightly from levels in 4Q09. Average selling price, excluding module processing services, declined, as expected, to US$2.03 per watt in the third quarter of 2009 from US$2.66 per watt in the second quarter of 2009, primarily due to the decrease in the market prices of PV products. Gross margin was 20.7% in the third quarter of 2009, compared to negative 6.2% in the second quarter 2009. Accounts receivable increased to RMB 707.2 million (US$103.6 million) as of September 30, 2009 from RMB 514.3 million as of June 30, 2009. This increase was primarily due to an increase in shipments as well as a large percentage of shipments occurring in the latter part of the third quarter of 2009. "We expect to see a healthy demand environment in 2010. The preliminary shipment target for 2010 is 500 MW. We expect strong demand from Germany as project development is accelerated in response to expected feed-in-tariff reductions, from new markets like China and the United States, and as the general availability of funding for solar projects improves."

09:43 am Microsoft ests and tgt raised to $36 at Jefferies following positive reviews of Windows 7: . Jefferies raises their FY10 and FY11 EPS ests to $1.83 and $2.16 from $1.73 and $2.04 (consensus $1.82 and $2.07), respectively, as recent positive comments by retailers have led the firm to increase their estimates for Windows 7. In addition, the firm raises their MSFT tgt to $36 from $32. Anecdotally, the firm notes that they have heard that some very large, savvy corporate IT buyers are leaning towards Win7 adoption in early calendar 2010, well before the expected release of SP1. Additionally, the firm surveyed >50% of the channel for PCs distributed to consumers inside the US. The comments the firm received ranged from neutral to strongly positive. The firm notes that without any significant out-of-the-box security problems, and strong anecdotal evidence of sell-through in the consumer and corporate channel, it looks like Windows 7 is living up to its reputation as a solid, reliable OS.